He attended De La Salle College, Churchtown, an all-male state secondary school in Dublin 14.
[3][4] After leaving the RADA Vaughan-Lawlor starred in many plays including The Quare Fellow directed by Kathy Burke, This Lime Tree Bower, for the Young Vic, and as Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World for the Abbey Theatre which toured North America.
For his performance in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui he won the 2009 Irish Times Best Actor Theatre Award.
[4] From 2010 to 2014, he began playing the lead role of Nigel "Nidge" Delaney in the critically acclaimed Irish television crime drama Love/Hate.
[9] In October 2013, he began filming in Dublin on a three-part political drama Charlie which is based on the life of the late Taoiseach Charles Haughey.
[15] His father played the part of a priest in Love/Hate and his son Freddie, appeared as Nidge and Trish's second child John in the crime drama.